Activating Vacant Spaces

Living Lots NYC is a clearinghouse of information that New Yorkers can use to find, unlock and protect our shared resources. 596 Acres started with vacant lots and remains committed to helping fill these holes.

Reviewing Accountability

Urban Reviewer catalogs over 150 urban renewal plans that NYC adopted to get federal funding for acquiring land, relocating the people living there, demolishing the structures and making way for new public and private development.

Gaining Access to Public Buildings

NYCommons helps New Yorkers impact decisions about public land and buildings in their neighborhoods. It is a collaboration between Common Cause/NY, the Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Center, and 596 Acres.

Join us for workshops offering information, strategies, tools, discussions, snacks, neighbors – what could be better? We will specifically be focusing on this piece of our NYC Parks infrastructure: http://livinglotsnyc.org/lot/6000010013/ (the Stanton Street Building in Sara D Roosevelt Park), a social center built in the 1930s that has been closed to the public and used as storage for decades, a victim of the disinvestment of the 1970s and 1980s. We are still living in the long shadow of those times.

In a neighborhood with dwindling shared spaces, residents would like their building back. They say, “Could we reimagine this decrepit building and the container carton alongside it, with cars and trucks in the park 24/7 that now attracts traffic drive-throughs and misuse, as a resiliency hub? a homeless services ‘urban hub’? local meeting space? a wild bird conservation center? indigenous plant center, youth center? with bathrooms that are maintained and serviced 24/7?”

All of these? Your ideas?

Imagine the building with those window reglazed, the doors fixed, the brick repointed, a greenroof with solar panels? with back -up chargers available for the next Superstorm? with Wi-Fi available to the neighborhood and chairs and tables and plants in front to attract positive shared use?”